Lifeboat Foundation

Scientists recently discovered thousands of ancient unknown bacteria lurking in Hawaii’s lava caves and geothermal vents.

Hawai’i is home to multiple lava caves, lava tubes, and geothermal vents. And a new study that researchers published in Frontiers in Microbiology reveals that these caves have higher bacteria diversity than expected. Researchers have discovered thousands of ancient unknown bacteria lurking within the caves.

Scientists say that these bacteria ecosystems represent how life might have existed during Earth’s early ages. They also say it could give us insight into how life on Mars looked before losing much of its atmosphere. The caves, home to lava tubes and geothermal vents on the island, house ancient unknown bacteria, unlike anything we’ve ever seen.

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When communication lines are open, individual agents such as robots or drones can work together to collaborate and complete a task. But what if they aren’t equipped with the right hardware or the signals are blocked, making communication impossible? University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign researchers started with this more difficult challenge. They developed a method to train multiple agents to work together using multi-agent reinforcement learning, a type of artificial intelligence.

“It’s easier when agents can talk to each other,” said Huy Tran, an aerospace engineer at Illinois. “But we wanted to do this in a way that’s decentralized, meaning that they don’t talk to each other. We also focused on situations where it’s not obvious what the different roles or jobs for the agents should be.”

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The 6 million-square-foot Samsung plant will be located south of Highway 79 and southwest of Downtown Taylor, near Taylor High School. It is expected to bring 1,800 jobs to Williamson County.

The plant is expected to start operations in 2024. The City of Taylor, Williamson County and Taylor ISD all already have economic agreements in place related to Samsung’s development.

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Automation is reaching more companies, imperiling some jobs and changing the nature of others.

In today’s business world, machine-learning algorithms are increasingly being applied to decision-making processes, which affects employment, education, and access to credit. But firms usually keep algorithms secret, citing concerns over gaming by users that can harm the predictive power of algorithms. Amid growing calls to require firms to make their algorithms transparent, a new study developed an analytical model to compare the profit of firms with and without such transparency. The study concluded that there are benefits but also risks in algorithmic transparency.

Conducted by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and the University of Michigan, the study appears in Management Science.

“As managers face calls to boost transparency, our findings can help them make decisions to benefit their firms,” says Param Vir Singh, Professor of Business Technologies and Marketing at CMU’s Tepper School of Business, who coauthored the study.

The TRISO-X, LLC Fuel Fabrication Facility (TF3) will be the nation’s first High-Assay, Low-Enriched Uranium (HALEU) fuel fabrication facility. TRISO-X is a wholly owned subsidiary of advanced reactor designer X-energy, LLC. TF3 will use uranium enriched between 5% and 20% to produce fuel for advanced and small modular reactors of the future. TF3 will manufacture TRi-structural ISOtropic (TRISO) fuel, an advanced fuel that is tough enough to handle the higher operating temperatures of several advanced reactors under development.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is supporting the development of TF3 through an award with X-energy, LLC under the Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program (ARDP) 0, which aims to speed the demonstration of advanced reactors through cost-shared partnerships with the U.S. nuclear industry. The design and license application development of TF3 was also supported through an $18M (federal cost share) industry FOA that was awarded to X-energy in 2018. TF3 will initially provide the TRISO fuel for X-energy’s Xe-100 high-temperature gas reactor.

“The TRISO-X Fuel Fabrication Facility represents the intersection of some of DOE’s hard work to bring advanced reactors to commercialization,” said Alice Caponiti, DOE’s Deputy Assistant Secretary for Reactor Fleet and Advanced Reactor Deployment. “We’ve been investing in R&D on TRISO fuels for decades. Now, with funding through ARDP, TF3 will bring the next evolution of nuclear fuel to reality, advancing new nuclear technology, creating new jobs, and supporting the clean energy economy.”

Serious psychological distress among U.S. adults remained fairly steady between April and July 2020, according to a research letter published online Nov. 23 in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Emma E. McGinty, Ph.D., from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, and colleagues conducted two waves of the Johns Hopkins COVID-19 Civic Life and Public Health Survey (April 7 to April 13, 2020, and July 7 to July 22, 2020). Changes in psychological distress during the COVID-19 pandemic was evaluated among 1,337 U.S. adults.

The researchers found that 13 percent of respondents reported serious distress in July 2020 versus 14.2 percent in April 2020, with 72 percent of adults reporting serious distress in both waves. The prevalence of serious distress was highest among adults aged 18 to 29 years (25.4 percent in April versus 26.5 percent in July), those with income less than $35,000 (20.2 percent in April versus 21.2 percent in July), and Hispanic individuals (17.9 percent in April versus 19.2 percent in July) at both time points. Among those with serious distress, the most common stressors were concerns about contracting COVID-19 (65.9 percent) and pandemic effects on employment (65.1 percent) and finances (60.6 percent). Educational interruptions were a stressor among adults with serious distress attending college and/or with school-aged children (69 percent).

Many Australians have welcomed the gradual easing of coronavirus restrictions. We can now catch up with friends and family in small numbers, and get out and about a little more than we’ve been able to for a couple of months.

All being well, restrictions will continue to be lifted in the weeks and months to come, allowing us slowly to return to some kind of “normal”.

This is good news for the economy and employment, and will hopefully help ease the high levels of distress and mental health problems our community has been experiencing during the pandemic.

The typical office worker often has soreness throughout their body as a result of their sedentary desk jobs. Even young individuals may develop shoulder pain, which was previously primarily an issue for elderly people. Once shoulder pain creeps in, it is difficult to dress oneself, let alone move one’s body freely. It is also difficult to fall asleep. While the rotator cuffs are often naturally harmed as we age, repairing them has shown to be difficult.